Have you all glanced at the newsweek cover http://www.newsweek.com It could make you retch. Bush reiterated the same point. The young people have all become selfless and are stepping up to the plate to fight the war, whereas really, none of these people depicted except for one high school student mentioned inside are of the class that would ever join the army, and they won't actually have to do anything other than experience some bad feelings. Plus, as someone mentioned here, military recruitments were down this month compared to last year. see below quotation starting--> BBC News Online: World: Americas
Friday, 2 November, 2001, 14:25 GMT Berkeley boycotted for anti-war stance
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/world/americas/newsid_1634000/1634103.stm
The city of Berkeley in northern California has been branded unpatriotic, and businesses there are being boycotted, after the council became the first in the nation to oppose the bombing of Afghanistan.
The city's Mayor, Shirley Dean has been inundated with e-mails and letters ever since the controversial 5-4 vote calling on the government to "bring the bombing of Afghanistan to a conclusion as soon as possible". The mayor, who abstained in the voting, says the message landing on her desk from businesses and individuals has generally been uniform. quotation ending__ ------------------------ The crucial thing to realize here is that Mayor Shirley Dean actually started this boycott herself. The day after this meeting she went on Fox News the O'Reilly factor and expressed something like "I'm so embarrassed. I wouldn't be surprised if everyone boycotts our city" and then promptly the boycott starts the next day. The thing is, boycotts hardly ever work unless they're extremely well organized. Here, none of these people were about to come to Berkeley anyway, and they can't name anything produced in Berkeley. Sho Chiku Bai saki is mostly produced in Berkeley. Berkeley actually has a lot of factories, but not for products that stand out as Berkeley produced, and no nationally famous brands.
The mayor and the council all don't get along at all. I sometimes watch the first half hour of their meetings on cable access for entertainment. She is always sniping at Kriss Worthington and Donna Spring (who proposed the resolution which was actually quite toned down and nonoffensive). They barely suppress their animosity at the meetings and are always interrupting each other. Polly Armstrong was being mean too.
The best part of the council meetings is that they are the #1 wingnut magnet in the whole city, and there are a lot of right wing wingnuts here. My housemate is a journalist and he said the meeting was a bust because all the media there had been expecting tons of people to come, but really there were only about 80-100, which was less than the mandatory spay ordinance meeting. There were a few families that brought a lot of kids to fill out comment cards, but only 10 people are randomly chosen to speak. This nut depicted at his website http://beckjord.com, who runs a UFO and bigfoot museum at the wharf was there and he kept heckling people and making threats. There was another right-wing guy who is on Sproul plaza most days with a cowboy hat and yellow signs that say "3AM" 'goat cart' 'front yard tipi''pack mule' and he was ranting about how we have to take the shopping carts from the homeless and give them goats, and he frequently accuses people of carrying contraband in their bags. There was another guy who came to Christian Parenti's talk recently, and he has some sort of theme where he says that most of the states aren't really states, and only DC, guam and puerto rico are, and so you can't have to pay taxes. And then he started accusing the city Attorney of not having the correct paperwork. The mayor is mean and behind the scenes she has occasionally had the police detain the wingnuts and have them taken to the mental hospital under code 51-50 for people who are a danger to themselves or others, but this is very corrupt and illegal. You can't incarcerate people for making a weird political speech or merely for being mentally ill. Christine P.
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